The Bush Doctrine on Speech Writing<\/strong><\/p>\n

In his entertaining memoir Speech*Less<\/em>, speech writer Matt Latimer reveals something about the speeches developed for President G.W. Bush.\u00a0 By the way, he was one of the speech writers.<\/p>\n

‘I quickly discovered the answer to a question I\u2019d been asked by people since I\u2019d arrived at the White House:\u00a0 why did the President\u2019s speeches <\/a>always seem to be so bad?\u00a0 It turned out it was intentional.\u00a0 On my very first day, Bill McGurn and Marc Thiessen both told me that the president was \u201cokay\u201d with a flat speech.\u00a0 All he cared about was logic and organization, not eloquence.\u00a0 As a student at Yale, the President had learned that all speeches should have an introduction, three points, a peroration, and a conclusion.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t even know what a peroration was.\u00a0 The president wasn\u2019t as insanely rigid about this approach, though, as Bill and the other writers thought he was. I\u2019d read many of his finer speeches <\/a>in his first term, and they rarely followed this pattern.\u00a0 But pushing the President to like a speech that was written differently was too risky.\u00a0 The writers all lived in fear that he\u2019d blow up at them, which on occasion he\u2019d been known to do.\u00a0 So in the quest for rigid logic\u2014point A to point B to point C to conclusion\u2014language that satisfied the President in one speech would be cut and pasted into the next speech and then the next.’<\/p>\n

Matt decides that, since he didn\u2019t go to Yale but rather attended the University of Michigan, he was not obliged to follow the routine.<\/p>\n

The Bush Doctrine of speech writing sounds suspiciously like the models I\u2019ve seen being peddled to the business community.<\/p>\n

Having a model is good, because it saves time and helps you think about structure.\u00a0 But slavish devotion to models creates M&M: monotony and mediocrity.<\/p>\n

Look for a way to use your model as a spring board to create an EXPERIENCE for your listeners.<\/p>\n

\n<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Bush Doctrine on Speech Writing In his entertaining memoir Speech*Less, speech writer Matt Latimer reveals something about the speeches developed for President G.W. Bush.\u00a0 By the way, he was one of the speech writers. ‘I quickly discovered the answer to a question I\u2019d been asked by people since I\u2019d arrived at the White House:\u00a0… Read More »The Bush Doctrine on Speech Writing<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_ti_tpc_template_sync":false,"_ti_tpc_template_id":""},"categories":[144,336],"tags":[710,36,774,603,18,297,509,19,88,360,277,21,337,600,117,612,840,906],"yoast_head":"\n